o tempora! o mores!
by painted.inkblot
Summary: Oh, what times; oh, what customs--Hermione echoes, two thousand years later. // Nighttime thoughts in wartime.


When she was a child, Hermione did not think she would be living in a tent in the middle of a war at age eighteen.

(Of course, she is leaving things out; how uncharacteristic of her, the one who writes in small, cramped print and still goes past the minimum essay length by two feet.) If ever Hermione as a small child thought she would be in a tent in the middle of a war at age eighteen, she did not think the tent would really be more equivalent to a small flat because the tent belonged to a family of witches and wizards; but magic is an entirely different idea, and Hermione would rather not deal with these two futures that she never, ever thought would sprout from the small child she had once been.

Ron is snoring, softly. The irregularities of his snores are somehow comfortable, following a pattern; as a small child, Hermione was familiar with snores. She didn't think of them in conjunction with her predicted eighteen-year-old self, but that was because they were snores—they were there, they were a very well established part of life. Of course snores would be there.

And so the snores are not what is keeping her awake. (Although, Hermione thinks, that could be better. How silly would it be if Ron's snoring would be keeping her awake instead of the fact that she is in a tent on a hunt that sometimes seems more like a wild goose chase instead of a chase for something that has been proven to be tangible, to be real? Her being kept awake by Ron would naturally, would logically mean she would be living in a world where once more the thought of her living in a tent in the middle of a forest in the middle of war is, once again, unprecedented.)

Harry is not snoring. If Hermione keeps as quiet as possible during one of Ron's non-snoring moments, if she doesn't shift under the scratchy bed covers, she still can't hear him even breathing. It's eerie, really, how quiet he is; it is that or he's screaming.

The Horcruxes, Hermione thinks. She breathes, once; the cabbagey smell of the tent fills her mouth, unpleasantly. At times she feels that this big flat tent is more miserable than a regular Muggle tent is; as much as she loves the Wizarding World, Hermione has never been able to shake off the feeling that some small details are unnatural. Not in the hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-prickling unnatural, but the sort of unnatural when you're wearing spectacles that are just slightly outdated for your eyesight, where something is off but you can't just decide what. That Hermione is in a tent that looks just as small and normal as any other from the outside but on the inside seems to be the flat of somebody living alone who is unfortunately enthusiastic about cabbages is one of those small details.

The Horcruxes, Hermione thinks again. She dislikes them for reasons other than the obvious, though she does of course hate them for the obvious as well. They were not meant to be in her world, where everything should be based on logic and there is no patience for nonsense. Just a few months ago, back in sixth year, even the end of sixth year, concepts such as 'living in a tent,' 'horcrux hunt,' 'not in school,' 'middle of the war,' 'parents in Australia'—these concepts could never have combined in Hermione's mind. Some of them she didn't think could ever have existed. But the Horcruxes made this combination possible, and Hermione possibly hates them just a little for it, for their ease in taking down the walls of her logic with just one swipe.

(Not that those walls were immaculately built, really. Hermione's not sure why a concept such as 'middle of the war' was so foreign to her. Even she, for all her teenage genius and 'best witch of her age'-ness could not really imagine the war or imagine herself in a war. Who can truly imagine the realities of a war? Who can think of themselves in relation to war? Not many; not Hermione.)

Hermione is eighteen. When she was a small child, she knew with no doubt that she would be in university at the age of eighteen. And not a bad university, either. A big one; a good one. Back then she knew no specifics, of course; the only one she knew by name was Oxford.

Hermione is a witch. Witches don't go to university; they don't go to Oxford. (What customs, Hermione has mused more than once, in her head. What strange customs.) And witches definitely don't go to university when there's a war on and they're in the middle of a Horcrux hunt. Strange customs, indeed. (Well, not customs, Hermione thinks. Horcrux hunts aren't a custom, to state the obvious. It's just a product of the times.

What times, Hermione thinks. What times.)

And thousands of years before her, Cicero says similar words, but reversed. _o tempora!_ he says. _o mores!_

Hermione would know this; but she is a witch. Witches do not know Cicero. Cicero's words do not come up in the heaps upon heaps of thick crusty books witches check out from libraries (ex. the Hogwarts Library). For all the knowledge stuffed into her brain she would not have if she weren't a witch, there is also all the knowledge Hermione does not have stuffed into her brain because she is not a Muggle.

Another snore; another lack of sound. The sun is beginning to rise, and a day far too similar to the previous days will begin: Hermione will look for food; the three will brainstorm and their storms will destroy and not produce; the war will go on, but detachedly, far away. It's quite odd that the war the three of them are responsible for ending is going on entirely without them.

Hermione yawns. Oh, what times, she thinks. Oh, what customs. Ignorance is bliss; perhaps Hermione would be sad if she knew her thoughts were even more unoriginal than she thought they were.

(_o tempora! _cries Cicero. _o mores!_)

* * *

Unedited; spur of the moment type thing (or at least it was spur of the moment when I wrote it nearly two months ago in early February). I don't need fanfiction to prove my innate nerdiness; the fact that I wrote something based on a quote by Cicero is proof enough for the next few years.


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